5 Bad Eating Habits That Can Lead To Weight Gain

Avoid These Common Practices in Your Daily Dining

1. Gobbling Up Fast Food. I never saw that movie Super Size Me, but I heard it was an eye-opener. If you Super Size your meal, that's 5,000 calories in one meal. Never mind breakfast and dinner. So in one meal, you just ate 2.5 days worth of food. You'd have to walk 7 hours straight to burn off the calories.

2. Too Much Soda. I don't mind an occasional Barq's Rootbeer or a Dr. Pepper, but did you know that the pH of Soda is 2.5 while battery acid has a pH of 1? Teeth Acid. Bone breakers. That's what this liquid stuff with bubbles really is. The phosphates in the soda pulls calcium from your bones.

3. Eating Hunched Over. I'm going to go a little Emily Post here. Sit up straight. You're not a caveman. Hunching when you eat not only looks primevil and unrefined, it also makes digestion tougher. Allow gravity to help your food digest by letting it go down...straight. Reduce the chances of heart burn.

4. Eating Too Fast. Don't embarrass your parents and make people think you've been living in a hole in the ground where they occasionally threw down scraps and chicken bones. The food on your plate is not going anywhere. Chew your food many, many times.

Digestion begins with saliva in the mouth. The smaller the pieces, the smaller the surface area for digestive acids to work on, the easier it becomes to absorb nutrients into the body. Simple physics.

5. Drinking While You're Eating. This one took me by surprise, but it actually makes sense when you think about it. Your stomach produces gastric acid when you digest your food. What happens when you pour water into acid? It dilutes it.

Your stomach ends up producing more acid to compensate. This leads to gas, heart burn, belching, bloating and poorly digested food. What do people do when they get gas? They throw antiacids into their system. What a mess!

I now eat my meals without drinking, and I've noticed the difference. Maybe just a few sips to prevent choking. At the end of a meal I don't feel bloated.

Drink liquids in between meals instead. Water is best for hydration. The older you get, the less gastric acids you produce, so you've got to be even more careful of gas.

Simple Changes Make a Difference

A lot of weight problems are due to bad food choices and bad eating habits. Weight gain leads to bad health and worst case scenario...diabetes and cancer. Sometimes a simple change in the way you do things daily can make a world of difference. Do as your mother taught you: mind your manners, sit up straight and chew your food well.